Transcript
MAURICIO CÁRDENAS: Good afternoon. My name is Mauricio Cárdenas. I’m the director of the Latin America Initiative here at the Brookings Institution, and it’s my real pleasure and honor to welcome Frank Pearl, the high commissioner for peace from the government of Colombia, and Ted Piccone, the deputy director of Foreign Policy here at the Brookings Institution, for what I hope will be a lively discussion on peace-building in Columbia.
Frank Pearl is a very good friend, a classmate from years of school and university. So it’s a real pleasure to welcome him to Washington and particularly to Brookings.
Frank, in addition to having studied economics at the University of Los Andes in Colombia, had a very successful career in the private sector. And 10 years ago, if you had looked at his CV, you’d say, well, he’s going to become a leading figure in the private sector as a CEO of one of the largest corporations in Colombia. But at some point in his career, he had this call of duty. He was called by President Uribe to join the administration in 2006 as the high commissioner for social and economic reintegration in Colombia. This was the beginning of the second administration of President Uribe.
As you probably know, and as Frank I’m sure will explain to us, during the first term, there were negotiations and there were agreements with illegal groups. As a result of that, there was a need to incorporate these individuals into society, figuring out ways of making sure that the reintegration process was successful, and this was Frank’s major responsibility. I’d say that although it’s still too early to make a final judgment, the one aspect that is remarkable about that process is that there was a lot of creativity in terms of figuring out ways of involving and engaging the business sector, the international community, to make sure that that was a successful process.
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